Poem of the Week

He totalled his blue truck –

slowly spun out on an icy bridge,

rammed it into a guard rail.

Climbed out unbruised.

Coal Creek. Middle of nowhere.

A passing couple brought him home.

Then three years

with letters from the Motor Vehicle Department

before he relinquished his license.

Before we met, while driving cab,

he broke his neck. It rewelded

off-kilter: head stuck forward.

Six years later, it’s that jut I suddenly see ahead.

It’s late, but for once no mist or fog. And on all

the twists and turns of that coastal highway,

its bluffs and coves, I am following

the spitting image of him

in that battered Sonoma –

its peeling paint, cracked brake lens,

the slumped driver silhouetted by my lights –

only the two of us on the road.